If you have some expertise in the area of Christian Apologetics, we are looking for instructors to help us take I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist to students and churches around the country. Greg Koukl and Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason, and Jason Reed of Southern Evangelical Seminary will join me, Frank Turek, in leading the CrossExamined Instructor Academy (CIA), August 13-15 in Charlotte, NC. Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answerman, will join us for a special Q and A on Wednesday night August 13. This is a great opportunity for you to make an impact through apologetics. But hurry– the application deadline is June 24. Click here for details.?
Can God do Anything? Can he create a stone so big that he cannot move it?
Part 1
In a response to one of our readers, I said that God cannot do anything. The reader responded?
“Then what about Miracles.”
In another post an atheist reader said:
“… God can suspend the law of gravity. God can make 2+2=5 if it suits his purpose …..”
But this seems to indicate a misunderstanding of the Christian God.
So let me see if I can clarify the Christian concept of God. I won’t try to speak for the god of any other religion or myth or a god of anyone’s personal creation. Why? Because that is only limited by your imagination.
In addition do understand that what I am about to present to you is Theology. That is, I maybe able to prove some of these concepts to you, but I can’t prove them all. However I do think that they are all rational, logical and self consistent. So take them as information to understand how Christian philosophers and how most of us on this site view God.
- God cannot do “anything.”
From the writings of the great Christian theologians, thinkers, scientists and philosophers, and from the Bible, we can derive the following of characteristics of the First Cause, uncaused Creator:
God cannot do anything which is not actually possible, for example contrary to the statement above, He cannot make 2+2=5,
He cannot stop being God,
He cannot make a round square in 2 dimensional space,
He cannot make black actually be white,
He cannot paint a door black with red paint bought from Home Depot and no added chemicals and no added activity on his part,
He cannot give someone freedom of choice in an area and then not let them choose in that area.
After all it would seem fallacious and irrational to try to argue that the source of all rationality could be irrational itself.
Here are some more:
He cannot sin,
He cannot cease to exist.
He cannot “not” be God.
He cannot make another God.
He cannot allow anything else to become God.
He cannot be irrational.
He cannot be evil.
He cannot be lonely.
He cannot be unhappy.
He cannot have unmet needs.
He cannot begin to exist.
He cannot forget.
He cannot learn anything new (at least as far as we understand).
The last few imply that He cannot change his mind (because that would mean he’d learned some new information or remembered something He’d forgotten, He can however have always planned to do something different at a certain point in time, or plan to respond to a certain event in a specific way).
And he certainly cannot create a stone so big that he cannot move it. But we’ll cover that in a second blog.
So if someone asks you if God can do anything. Say “No.”
- The Miracles in the Bible are not “actually” impossible
As indicated in my blog of April 28th, Biblical Miracles do not fall into this category because they are not actually “impossible.” They are not irrational. Why do we say that? Well because any miracle or supernatural event recorded in the Bible could have been made to take place if enough technology, equipment or knowledge was available or if an extra-dimensional being was able to manipulate molecules, electrons, quarks or leptons. Look carefully, there are no truly impossible or irrational miracles in the Bible including the creation of the Universe and if an atheist were to suggest that creating matter from nothing is impossible, we’d say “Really, then why do you think it happened accidentally”.
By the way the feasibility of most of the Biblical miracles (short of creation) through technology is quite an interesting observation when you think about it. I doubt I can claim credit for it though, because, as with most things I think I have discovered, I always end up finding out that some other philosopher or theologian had already written about it 1000-2000 years ago.
An entry on my personal webpage titled “Is the Supernatural Impossible? Goes in to more detail about miracles (click for the link).
Let’s look briefly at the the water into wine miracle. The water was changed into wine most probably at the molecular level. It wasn’t water that was also wine (and while it could have been hypnotism, the passage indicates it wasn’t and anyway hypnotism isn’t “impossible”). He changed the water molecules into actual wine molecules (and very good wine at that). Was it synthetic wine? It probably was. (I say probably because of course he could have also swapped the water for pre-made wine – OK OK using the equivalent of a transporter beam…I’m a geek at heart).
What about dead men walking as in the case of those who came to life, again healing of tissue and reanimation of life (God created life to begin with – a merging of some multi-dimensional elements back to their original 4D ones) are all “possible” rational things. They are just not natural or common.
So we see none of these miracles are actually impossible.
Now it’s worth nothing that impossibility is usually seen best in philosophical or conceptual issues. E.g. making the square root of (-1) = 1. Or making the cube of 5, 124. All of which are rationally impossible.
You see making 1+1 = 3 or 2+2= 5 is not a matter of manipulating molecules. It is dealing with things at a much basic and in a sense a higher level. It’s dealing with things at the point of rationality. Mess with that and everything stops being cohesive, the universe starts to unravel, and you start to violate the very nature of God.
What about changing the laws of Gravity in the example. I would argue that God cannot change or suspend the laws of Gravity without having to then simultaneously attend to all the other effects of there being no Gravity. That’s not to say that he couldn’t also stop every individual thing from flinging out in to space using some other power, but the point is He would have to attend to it.
It’s of value to note that the original comment about Gravity by the atheist at the opening of this blog was said in the context of God being unable to be studied by science because he could change the laws of Gravity and we would not know about it. However, the nature of God being what it is and from the examples in the Biblical miracles, I tend to think that if God did do a miracle he would allow the side effects of the miracle to be apparent such that we could indeed measure it and see that an external agent had acted upon things. I also think that while God could indeed do things that cannot be studied by science, He could just as well do certain things that COULD be studied by science and point to him. So we cannot apriori assume that God did not do so. Maybe God has chosen to be able to be detected by Science. In which case would not science be the best way to detect him?
You cannot merely say that Science cannot prove God. If God wanted to, Science could indeed prove God. And contrary to what some believe, most Christians Theologians and Philosophers think that God HAS indeed chosen to leave his Fingerprint for us to detect. The question we are asking ourselves is “Why is he not more obvious about it?”, for that discussion you’ll have to wait for a future post titled “Why doesn’t God just show himself?” So for now know that the miracles in the Bible at not rationally or logically impossible.
- But I thought God was Omnipotent
(this section was updated with the definition of Pantocrator on 5/11/08 – I would like t
o express my appreciation to “db0” who allowed me to bounce these arguments off him and prompted this further expansion, I’m adding this back into the blog to allow people to see most of the argument in one place. )
God IS omnipotent (all powerful) but he is not omni-able (i.e. able to do “any”thing at least not anything irrational). The definition of power should not be confused with capability when it comes to the Christian God. There’s a clear distinction between the two. Christian theologians have long taught that God is all-powerful, not all capable when it comes to irrationality. And if you think about this, we see this as being tied into His character, His personality, His being. If God were to become irrational, it would violate his nature and he would cease to be God. God is a slave to his character (but then so are you).
But you say doesn’t the Bible say that God can do anything? Actually no, it does not. The word used in the Bible for Omni-Potent comes from the Greek word Pantocrator (Pantokrator). Pantocrator means all ruling. Almighty not all-capable. Let me explain.
When the Vulgate Manuscript was created as a translation from the Greek Septuagint (the Old Testament) into Latin, the Greek word Pantocrator was translated into the Latin “omnipotens”, which means having all the power (again note this is still technically correct as it means having power and strength not capability). The word is tied to rulers and ruling not to being all “capable.”
Over the recent years many Christians just started assuming that Omnipotence meant all capable and modern language uses it that way. But the original Greek and Hebrew do not support this. (BTW that’s what we think is infallible, the original Greek and Hebrew autographs written by the apostles and prophets. We don’t think the translations are or the copies are infallible.)
The KJV New Testament Greek Lexicon explains Pantocrator as:
Strong’s Number: 3841
pantokravtwr from (3956) and (2904)?
Transliterated Word TDNT Entry:?Pantokrator
Noun: Masculine?
Definition: he who holds sway over all things, the ruler of all, almighty: God
As you can see Pantocrator does not mean all capable even of irrational things. It just means powerful, mighty and ruler of all.
Hope this helps clarify where we stand.
Neil Mammen
By the way: Any errors in examples or theology are my errors and not those of the owners of this site.
Coming soon:
Part II. The correct response to: Can God create a stone so big that he cannot move it?
Is the Supernatural Impossible?
(Arthur C.) Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
When I talk to individuals who do not believe in God or even “a god,” often the first objection they provide to me is that it is not possible for supernatural events or miracles to take place. I’d like to look at this in more detail.
To start off this discussion I’d like to introduce two concepts
Concept 1: SAT
Let’s introduce the concept of a group of beings with Arthur C Clarke’s Sufficiently Advanced Technology (SAT). Now I’m not promoting any sort of Erick Von Danikan theology here. Just stating a possibility. I feel comfortable doing this, because if I am discussing the concept of the supernatural with you and you don’t believe in it, then by necessity you must believe in Evolution. So, if it is given that you believe in evolution, you then have to admit that due to existence of billions and billions of stars and years, you must allow that somewhere out there, there is a rational non-zero possibility that there exists a race of advanced beings. Advanced in the sense that their technology is far advanced than ours i.e. they have Sufficiently Advanced Technology. You cannot eliminate them as a possibility. You cannot conclusively say they do not exist. The very fact that you believe in Evolution, forces you to admit that it is indeed statistically POSSIBLE for another race to be out there that started evolving before we did, or that has evolved faster than we did. For you to disagree with this possibility would be for you to have to disagree with evolution. Because it is impossible for you to say that it could ONLY happen once or that it could only happen the way it did happen here on earth. In fact Richard Dawkins recently admitted that this was what he believed happened to create life on earth (thus avoiding abiogenesis, at least for our race).
Concept 2: Multidimensionality
The second concept is the concept of extra-natural dimensions. For “natural” I intend to imply the 4 dimensions that most Atheists maintain are the limits of accepted natural science. Height; Length; Width and Time. Things that are currently physically measurable. I hope this is not a strawman as I’ve had these sort of statements made to me many times by atheists.
However, as I mentioned in my debate at the Commonwealth Club against Eugenie Scott and Eric Rothschild (the Lawyer who won the Dover case against Intelligent Design being mentioned in Schools), if you limit science to only 4 dimensions and any sort of extra dimensional activity as superstitious religious claptrap, you are then making a statement that the few thousand papers and the tens of thousands of attendees at String Theory conferences that postulate almost 26 dimensions are all written and attended by religion freaks.
Physics regularly postulates multidimensionality, and just moments after the Big Bang we can calculate that there were at least 10 dimensions if not 26. All but 4 of the dimensions have disappeared to our senses. But they are possibly out there, and string theory postulates that we can one day interact with them.
So the atheist that says there is nothing else real out there but what we can touch, taste, feel, hear, smell, or measure has just dug himself into a hole. (Not to mention ignored mathematical concepts completely).
Obviously, things that take place outside the realm of the 4 dimensions are not impossible, nor are they inconceivable or limited to religious fundamentalist wackos like me.
The Miracles
So given that introduction to expand the readers horizons and keeping in mind the “Super Intelligent race with Sufficiently Advanced Technology” let’s look at some of the miracles of Jesus and see if they are indeed “impossible”.
Let us start with some of the more generic healings that are claimed to have been done by Jesus. Could some of the healings affected by Jesus have in fact have been achieved by a modern medical doctor with modern technology? For example a blind man could have his corneas removed or vaporized to heal him from glaucoma. A paralytic could be administered to with a bone healing/growing stimulator or a spinal column growth stimulator. A manic could be given a direct infusion of medicines or herbs that would be Prozac or Lithium equivalents.
Of course your next two questions are going to be:
Q1. How did Jesus do this with no apparent equipment or drugs?
Q2. How did Jesus gain access to this technology?
Let’s answer the first one before moving on:
A1. Surely our beings with SAT could create nanobots that were virtually invisible and yet achieve the intended purpose even to the point of being able to administer drugs directly to the location that needed them.
A2. The question about Jesus having access to this technology will be addressed shortly.
Now let us move on to other sorts of miracles.
How about the feeding of the 5000? An individual with “SAT” could seemingly create food out of nothing if he had the technology that allows matter replication/conversion, where the very air molecules are taken and converted into new elements (all you need is lots of energy, perhaps a micro fission unit). Now it’s a given that we today do not have this technology, but one could theorize that one day we may. Think of it as a nanobot food replicator.
The point I am trying to argue is that it IS indeed possible for this to be the case. True, there is no hard evidence that such a race of beings exist, or of their abilities to create a miniature self powered food replicator. But the goal here is not to prove that Jesus did it., but that it is conceptually possible, it is physically possible and it is certainly possible within the realm of logic and science. Whether Jesus really did it or not is a case for a different discussion (and a valid case needs to be made for that as well, we cannot ignore that).
Now you’ll note that I have not yet even delved into the multi-dimensional aspect. So let’s do so. Consider the miracle of Jesus showing up in the locked upper room. The claim is that after the resurrection, the apostles are huddled in the upper room with the doors locked and all of sudden Jesus shows up.
Well it would be peanuts for a multi-dimensional being to hop over the 3 physical dimensions into a 5th dimension and into the room. The same way a 3D being would hop over a 2D prison (a drawing of a box) and suddenly appear inside the 2D prison. Can’t be done, you say? Physics says it maybe feasible. Ever hear of a wormhole? OK OK you argue no one could survive the journey through the wormhole? Are you sure? Is it impossible? Or just improbable. What if they had a very SAT spaceship or transparent spacesuit? You get the point.
So are miracles impossible?
Obviously, we now see that if you believe in Evolution you must admit it is POSSIBLE for beings with SAT to exist. And if beings with SAT could exist it, is possible that one of them showed up 2000 years ago and we decided to kill him. And this is the answer to Q2 above. “Q2. How did Jesus gain access to this technology?” He could have been a being with SAT.
The question now becomes not “Is it POSSIBLE for Supernatural events to occur?” but “Is it PROBABLE for Supernatural events to occur?” We can agree that it is possible now.
And strangely, the atheist has some common ground with this proposition on the probability issue. When you argue against the probability issue, an atheist is arguing against himself if he argues against this. For we all know that the probability of ab
iogenesis (life from no life) and evolution are very very very low, yet atheists believe they occurred. So why not this then?
Conclusion
Now I should clarify, I certainly do NOT think Jesus was a being with SAT. I just want to dissuade rational thinking people from assuming that it is NOT possible. I personally think that the science of the Big Bang shows that it is more rational to believe in an extra-dimensional non-mechanistic freewill that is powerful enough to create a universe, knowledgeable enough to fine tune the universe and able to move independently through the multiple dimensions (see Who was Agent X for the evidence for this). And once we realize that it’s more rational to believe in this first cause, surely we see the obviousness that this first cause would have the ability to manipulate molecules and bring about “supernatural miracles.”
Just some personal thoughts, I could be wrong of course, I have been wrong in the past after all.
Neil Mammen
Note: At no point am I postulating that this Being is able to do that which is actually impossible. E.g. making 1+1 = 3. If this confuses you then keep checking this blog, we’ll eventually clarify the difference between what is actually impossible and what is supernatural, in more detail.
Lee Strobel has put up several short video clips of some of my presentations on his website. Click here for a clip on Why Don’t People Believe in Miracles?
By the way, LeeStrobel.com has hundreds of other short videos related to apologetics. I highly recommend you check it out.